


what's written in the stars

by agrestenoir



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Alternate Universe - The Time Traveler's Wife Fusion, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Angst, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Romance, Sex, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-05
Updated: 2019-07-05
Packaged: 2020-06-12 10:10:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19568128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agrestenoir/pseuds/agrestenoir
Summary: Marinette never knew what diety she pissed off to be cursed to love a time traveler.





	what's written in the stars

_“I think we are one of those couples with a long story to tell when people ask how we found each other. Because I will see her every now and then, and maybe one year, she’ll be with a different me, and the next year, I’ll be with a different her. And it’s gonna take a long time, but then it’ll be perfect. I’m in no rush.”_

*

When Marinette is twenty-years-old, she meets Adrien for the first time. 

He’s behind the counter at the coffee shop, an apron wrapped around his waist as he takes an order from the customer at the register, and looking younger than she’s ever seen him. Her mind draws a blank as she rushes forward, pushes to the front of the line, and grabs ahold of his wrist before he can pull away. 

“Hello,” she says with a bright smile. 

He stares at her in confusion, quirking an eyebrow high. “Hi?” 

There’s a moment of silence between them, the span of a handful of heartbeats, and then she’s leaning closer. “Do you… Do you know who I am?” 

“I’m sorry?” Adrien shakes his head and starts to pull away. “You have the wrong person.” 

“I love you,” she tells him suddenly, expression imploring. “Please don’t go.” 

“Oh?” A smile stretches across his face, and heavy-lidded eyes turn her inside out. “Tell me more.”

It’s nothing new, but it’s a face she recognizes from those years he was tentative and unsure, when Early Adrien had no idea how to talk to women. Even though it has the power to make her heart throb, bruised and bleeding in her chest, she knows there’s no truth behind it. Not here, not in this time. 

Adrien is eighteen and full of the charm and charisma that tears her apart, something that squirms under her skin like a live wire, and something she _doesn’t_ miss. But it’s still Adrien, the person she loves with her whole being, and she’ll take him no matter what age. (Even if he’s still that rascal sort who thinks flirty eyes and sharp smirks are all girls want, and then they’ll leave him alone.) 

“Over coffee,” she says. “Preferably when you’re not working.” She thinks back to what he told her way back when, tries to remember what time he gets off again. “Tonight, maybe seven?”

He smiles, and Marinette’s heart picks up its pace. 

This is how it all starts.

*

It actually starts when Marinette is six and picking flowers in the park across the street, when an older man steps out from behind the old willow tree with an easy smile and kind eyes. He’s holding a pink lily, petals wet with morning dew, and offers it to her. 

“Someone told me this is your favorite flower,” he says when her little hand brushes his. “But I think blue poppies are better.”

Marinette manages an indignant huff. “Blue flowers are stupid.” 

The man merely chuckles, shaking his head. “Maybe, maybe.” He stretches out his hand for her to shake. “My name’s Adrien. Do you mind if I stay here for a little bit and look at flowers with you?”

Little Marinette hesitates for a moment, her parents’ voices echoing through her head about strangers and caution, but this man looks at her with that smile, and it’s like she’s known him for her entire life. A part of her recognizing him instantly.

“Sure. I’m Marinette,” she murmurs in response, and the rest, they say, is history.

*

“So you’re my girlfriend, and you know I time travel,” Adrien says incredulously over the rim of his coffee cup, like he doesn’t know which concept is more unbelievable. “How long has this been going on exactly?” 

“You’ve been with me my whole life,” she tells him with a smile. Marinette reaches out and grabs his free hand in the center of the table, intertwining their fingers together. “You’ve come more frequently in the last five years though. I think it’s because it’s closer to when you first met me.”

“This is still a lot to take in.” Adrien shakes his head, still dumbfounded. “It’s not every day that some pretty stranger comes up to me at work and tells me that she knows my deepest secret, that we’re apparently dating, and that she knows all about my future.”

“ _Our_ future,” she corrects. “You’ve known mine my whole life, so I kind of like being on the other side of things.”

Adrien leans back in his chair and crosses his arms against his chest. “So you’re telling me that someday soon, I’m going to start traveling back in some random girl’s timeline?” 

“It’s not random,” Marinette presses and nudges his ankle with her toe. “It’s never been random.” 

“Trust me, it is, bugaboo, because I’d remember if I ever saw a pretty girl like you—” he begins, eyes lingering on the ladybug earrings she’s currently wearing, the nickname slipping out as easy as breathing.

She kicks him hard enough to make him choke. “It isn’t.” Anger burns low and hot in the pit of her stomach, and she remembers how stupid Early Adrien was, still learning how to function without the mask he portrays to random girls who accost him in coffee shops. 

“I just don’t understand how this is supposed to work,” he tells her honestly. 

“You once told me it’s like gravity: that big events pull you in.” She shrugs helplessly. “That’s how it is for me too. The more important something or someone is, the more I travel to them.” 

“ _Wait_.” Adrien’s eyes flash wildly. “You time travel too?” 

A laugh falls from her lips and into the space between them. “You think I’m from this time?” Adrien tightens his grip on her hand as the truth crashes over him. “I travel too, but only to you.” 

“Why?” 

“What can I say?” Marinette smiles, eyes glimmering. “Big events pull me in, and you were mine.” 

*

“I don’t think we’ve ever been the same age,” Marinette tells him, when she is eighteen and he is eighteen. “It’s different.” 

“What’s the oldest you’ve seen me?” he asks as they amble down the snow-slick sidewalks towards the Italian café near Marinette’s university. Adrien is fresh from his spring semester while Marinette is in the middle of her fall, her workload already increasing as she prepares for her finals. He carries her bag over his shoulder while she buttons up her jacket.

Marinette bites her bottom lip in thought. “I think… twenty-eight maybe?” 

“That’s… a long time,” he muses. “I do this for over a decade?” 

“I’ve been doing it for longer,” she tells him with a sharp smirk. “Better catch up, darling.” 

Adrien laughs, shoulders shaking. “And how long have you been traveling?” 

“I started when I was ten.” 

“And you only go to my future?”

“Your future, a different reality, a parallel universe.” She sighs and buries her face in the worn knit scarf. “We’ve never really figured out what it is. Time travel or universe hopping or something else. Nothing really needed a label. We don’t even know if we’re in the same timeline.” 

Adrien thinks about that for a long while. “So I could be in my sixties when you’re born. Or you could be long dead right now.” 

“Or I could be in a completely different reality,” she says softly. “There’s an infinite number of them you know: ones that are completely different, others only slightly. One where we took a left instead of a right, where I studied forensics instead of fashion. You just never know.” 

Adrien whistles low. “Wow. You’ve thought a lot about this.” 

Marinette presses her lips into a thin line. “I’ve spent most of my life waiting for you. I’ve had time.”

*

Marinette is twenty-one and sitting with a twenty-three-year-old Adrien on a rooftop in the grassy hills of England somewhere. There’s a B&B belonging to a friend of his from London that he likes to visit a few times during the summer when he’s on break from school. 

“So you ever been here before?” he asks her as he takes a sip of the cinnamon whiskey he’s taken up to the roof with them. “Little bit different than New York, I presume.” 

She leans back on her hands, crosses her legs, and tosses her head back to stare up at the night sky. In the distance, the moon bobs above the waves. It’s definitely not like the city. 

“Once,” she tells him and thinks back to when she was twelve and walking down the hallway of her home, only to suddenly find herself in a meadow in England with Adrien laying on a picnic blanket. It’d only been for a moment, where she managed a short wave, and was thrust back into her own timeline. “But it was nothing like this.” 

“It’s really something, isn’t it?” He hands her the bottle of whiskey, and she takes a quick sip, wincing as the bitter taste burns her throat. “Don’t get a view like this back home.” 

Marinette’s eyes rest on him, trim and toned body laid out across the roof, all long legs and pale skin. “You definitely don’t,” she tells him, probably a little tipsy but far past caring. 

Adrien can feel her gaze on him and takes the bottle from her hands, tossing back a shot and choking it down to give himself an excuse for his burning cheeks. Shoulders shaking, Marinette laughs and leans forward to press a kiss to his cheek, to the tip of his nose, and then to his lips. 

He smiles into the kiss. “You’re the best view I’ve ever seen.” He pulls away and rests his forehead against hers, breathing heavily. “I wish I could see you every minute of every day.” 

Marinette sucks on her bottom lip and pushes Adrien backwards until she can lay across his chest. She can hear his heartbeat through the thin fabric of his shirt, the steady _pitter-patter_ that reminds her that he’s real and he’s here. Sometimes she thinks she’ll wake up one day and this will all be a dream—time travel, Adrien, and their love—but then she jumps again, and he’s there, right where he should be. 

“I wish I could wake up next to you every day,” she tells him softly. He cards his fingers through her tangled-curls, and tears prickle in the corner of her eyes. “I love you so much.” 

She tries to quell the fears bubbling up inside her, her heart beating against her ribcage like a wild animal wanting to get out. What if this is all their life is—waking up alone with the ghost of the other in their bed—and they never get the chance to make something real out of it? What if the time traveling stops, and she never sees Adrien again after this moment? What if this is all they have?” 

“I graduate next week,” she says. “Can you come?” 

He looks at her sadly. “I’ll try,” he tells her and presses a kiss to the top of her head. “I always do.” 

Sometimes that’s all they can do.

*

Marinette can’t remember when she first fell in love with Adrien. 

He’s always been a part of her life—since the moment in the park to the last night they spent together in her apartment in the middle of New York. All she knows is that she’s loved him for as long as she’s known him, which is basically forever at this point. At twenty-four, you’d think she’d know better than to love a person she can never keep.

But that’s a lesson Marinette’s been trying to learn for nearly twenty years to no avail. 

“Do you ever wonder if this is the last time we’ll see each other?” Marinette asks him on the eve of her twenty-fifth birthday in a mess of sheets and skin, wrapped in his arms as a storm brews outside. 

Adrien at twenty-seven simply shrugs like he has no care in the world and holds her tighter. “I don’t have time to worry. I’ve been traveling my whole life, and if there’s one thing I know, it’s that I have to value my time in the present.” 

“But is this my present or yours?”

“It doesn’t matter,” he says and presses a kiss to her crown. “All that matters is that you’re here, and so am I, and that we’re together.”

*

One time, when she’s twenty-two and visiting home, she goes to London and tries to look for Adrien.

She doesn’t find anything and heads back to Paris, too broken-hearted to think.

*

“Can I kiss you?” Adrien asks while they stand in the pouring rain, when she’s seventeen and he’s nineteen. “Or is that too weird?”

There’s no proper response as Marinette throws her arms around his neck and pulls him close. She kisses him then, and it’s wet and messy, maybe from the rain, who really knows, but it’s wonderful and beautiful because it’s something they’ve both been waiting for. When they pull away, both are gasping for breath. 

Marinette laughs, giggles spilling into the space between them, as she rests her damp head against his soaked shirt. “God… I’ve been wanting to do that since I was fourteen.”

A shiver goes down his spine. “You’ve loved me for a long time.”

“You’ve just…” Her voice trails off as she struggles to find the words. “You’ve always been there. I don’t think… I ever had choice not to.” 

“Do you ever regret that?” he asks. 

Marinette shakes her head. “Never.”

*

Marinette doesn’t love Adrien just because the universe told her too, but rather because he’s ingrained himself in every part of her life. While the concept of him has always seemed impossible, he makes himself known in little ways that matter, sometimes just to prove he exists, and others just to make her happy. It’s these things that make her fall for him.

When she has her first fashion show, he’s standing in the crowd with a noise maker he’d snagged from the convenience store down the way, getting chased out by security when he uses the damn thing. When she’s drowning in finals during her freshman year at a university in New York, away from home for the first time, he comes with an energy drink and study guide to keep her company. During her graduation, he’s seated front row away from the rest of her family, blowing her a kiss and mouthing “ _I love you!_ ” for her eyes alone. 

It’s every afternoon in the park pressing flowers between the pages of one of her father’s old dictionaries. It’s poking each other with foils between Adrien’s fencing matches when he’s sweaty and anxious and she’s there to calm him down. It’s hours spent over designs as she finalizes the pieces before the presentation for the spring collection. It’s her at fifteen teaching him at twenty to skip rocks on the Seine only for him to turn around at twenty-four and teach seven-year-old Marinette the same thing. 

It’s all these things and more—the way he comes to the big moments in her life, the way she makes things big moments in his. 

Marinette wonders sometimes how she got so lucky to have someone who’s always there, and even when he disappears, there’s the burning hope he’ll come back. How he always keeps his promises. How he’s her constant support. How he never fails to make her smile. How his kindness shines through in everything he does. How soft and tender he is when she’s a little girl. How much he loves her and fights for her in the present. 

Marinette may not know _when_ she fell in love with Adrien, but she definitely knows _why_.

*

The first time Marinette time travels, she’s ten and afraid. 

She’s skipping down the street to head home from the park as the sun burns low on the horizon, and suddenly it’s daybreak and she’s in the middle of an auditorium full of loud voices, flashing lights, and lots of people. She doesn’t know when she is—let alone _where_ —but before she can panic, there’s hands on her shoulders and a man kneeling in front of her. 

“Marinette?” Adrien whispers, green eyes like the trees, soft and kind. 

“W-Where am I?” she presses as tears trek down her cheeks. “I was going home, a-and then I—” She snaps her eyes shut as a sob bubbles up from her chest. “I w-want to go home.” 

Her gaze skitters to the people around her, wearing weird clothing and weird hair and weird shoes with weird voices and weird phones, and she doesn’t know if she’s thirty years in the past or thirty years in the future. It only makes her press closet to Adrien and wrap her arms around his neck, holding on tightly as her whole body shakes, because he has a habit of disappearing when she doesn’t want him to, and she _won’t let him go_ now. 

“It’s okay, it’s okay.” He rubs a hand down her back to comfort her. “You’re fine, you’re safe, I promise.” 

“What happened?” she whimpers. 

Adrien looks at her, twenty-one and quiet, and simply smiles. “You time traveled.”

*

Marinette is twenty-six when she travels onto a balcony in the middle of the city in Paris, attached to an unknown apartment in the uptown district. It’s a quaint complex with a sloping roof and white brick, maple trees bending gracefully over the street below. The late morning sunlight filters through the leaves and a spring breeze filters past. 

Cocking her head to the side, she ambles towards the window of the apartment, trying to make sense of where she is. In all her travels, she’s never been here before and Adrien has never told her about it.

She peers through a window with white-trim and catches sight of movement inside. Hesitation has never been her strong suite, especially when she’s traveling, as she never knows how much time she has to do what she needs to do. Usually Adrien is somewhere close, but something about this time feels different. 

The window shows a dining table where two people sit—a man with a red hat and thick-rimmed glasses and another woman with dark hair pulled into a high bun. They’re both sipping from coffee mugs and pondering over open catalogs strewn across the table in front of them. The man says something that causes the woman to shake with laughter as she scoots her chair back and makes a move to stand. 

As she turns to the side, Marinette lets a gasp fall from her lips. 

She recognizes the woman as _herself_ —laugh lines etched into her face, hair piled into messy curls, and belly swollen with child. 

A single tear trails down her cheek as she continues to stare, speechless and shocked, at the older Marinette who’s happy and with a man other than Adrien. Her hands are shaking as they clench the fabric of her shirt in tight fists, heart thundering like it’s going to break through her ribs, the world tilting on its axis as reality crashes over her. 

She’s pregnant. He’s not Adrien. 

She doesn’t _want_ this. She’s never wanted this. Her whole life—it’s only ever been Adrien. 

There’s a pull within her, the universe trying to take her back, but she fights it even as her world falls apart. She needs to see more, get her answers to questions she hasn’t even formed yet, has to learn how to change this future because she doesn’t _want it_. 

As everything begins to fade and she finds herself between one time and the next, the older Marinette turns around and stares out the window, catching her gaze before she can fully disappear. The Marinette inside only presses her lips into a thin smile and raises her hand in goodbye, the silver ring on her finger glinting under the kitchen light. 

“It’s okay,” she mouths to her. “It’s gonna be okay.”

*

Marinette doesn’t like to think about all this ending. 

If she has her way, they’ll keep jumping in and out of each other’s lives forever. It’s not much of a life together, but it’s theirs, and _damn it_ , that matters to her. She’d spend the rest of her life being a ghost in his, the figure found in all his photographs, the voice on his answering machine when he’s out and she can’t bother him, the memory that he goes back for when he needs to. 

Marinette would do it all if it means she gets to keep him. 

She wonders what Adrien thinks. She knows he loves her, but the question is… _is it enough_? 

For her, it always has been.

*

“What’re you doing?” Adrien asks her at twenty-seven, breathless and smiling between her kisses.

She’s twenty-six and desperate, convinced she’s just seen the end, where she’s thirty-something with a family of her own and no Adrien in sight. It makes her hungry for what she has _now_ , and she wants to lose herself in it just to hide from the bubble future and what it has in store for them. 

_It’s funny_ , she thinks to herself. _I’ve never been scared of the future before._

Inside her bedroom, she pulls him down by the collar of his shirt and crushes her lips to his, wet and hard with teeth and spit. He tastes like vanilla chap stick and coffee as he’d travelled in the middle of his breakfast, and _God_ … she just wants to savor this. He hefts her against the bedroom door, her legs wrapping around his waist as she pulls her blouse overhead, and he buries his face against her neck. 

“I missed you,” she tells him between harsh gasps, shoulders shaking. He only smiles and spins around, throwing her onto the bed before crawling atop her. 

More clothes start coming off, exposing miles of warm skin she’s never once taken for granted. He sighs as he pushes into her, breathes turning shaky, but his kisses turn more ferocious. Hips pumping, toes curling, bed rocking—her nails dig into his shoulder blades as she holds onto him for dear life. It makes tears prickle in the corners of her eyes at the thought that she could someday lose all of this. 

“I love you, you know that, right?” he says as he pulls away, staring down at her in awe. 

Marinette can’t even muster a response, only nudging him closer until she can capture his lips with hers, opening her mouth and licking inside. Adrien smiles into it and reaches between them with one hand, cupping her sex and pressing until the world turns white. They lose themselves in the ebb of the tide, the sheets turning sticky with sweat, until her thighs clench around his hips, back arching off the bed, and she comes hard. 

When Marinette comes back to herself, and the world seems to right itself, she curls up in Adrien’s arms and buries her face in the crook of his neck. “I want you,” she murmurs against his skin. “I love you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you.” 

Adrien is silent for a moment before he laughs. “Did… Did you just _propose_?” 

“Yes,” she says because she can’t imagine what else she’d rather do. 

“Isn’t that my line?” he teases in jest. 

Marinette snorts. 

(God, she loves him.)

*

The first morning after, when she’s twenty and full of hope, she stares at the twenty-two-year-old Adrien sleeping beside her, who’s hogging the blankets and drooling on the pillow, and can’t help but laugh. “I swear, I’m gonna love you forever,” she tells him, and it’s more than a promise or a far-fetched dream. 

It’s always been a fact.

*

Adrien is twenty-eight and tosses her a small black box when she collapses on the couch in her new apartment. Moving back to Paris was harder than she imagined, but at least her boyfriend knows how to time things perfectly. They’ve spent the past few hours moving the last of her things in, and the adventure of unpacking still awaits, but it’s been a long day and she doesn’t know how long Adrien has left. 

“What’s this?” She takes the box and turns it over, gears in her head turning slowly, because she’s twenty-seven and tired. “Was this packed somewhere?” 

“No,” he says with a soft smile and plucks it out of her fingers. Marinette lets out an indignant squawk, trying to yank it back, but he presses her back against the couch with a single finger to her forehead. “Just hold on a second.” 

“Is it mine?” Marinette bites her bottom lip, trying to picture where he’s swiped it from. She doesn’t recall the box among her jewelry when she packed it all up. 

“Well, it ought to be,” he tells her. “Just depends what your answer is.” 

The world shudders to a halt. Her hands fly up to cover her mouth, and she draws a blank, unable to think of any words. 

Adrien slips off the couch and rocks back on his haunches, propping up on one knee in front of her. “Marinette, I feel like I’ve loved you since before I knew you.” He swallows, voice breaking. “Last year, you asked me a question, and I… I didn’t have an answer, and you didn’t do it correctly. I went to my father and asked for my mother’s rings because…”

A half-formed sob falls from his lips before he can choke it down. She’s still frozen.

“You _didn’t_ —” Marinette starts to say, voice full of tears. 

“You asked last time, so I think now it’s my turn, so Marinette Dupain-Cheng, will you—” A smile stretches across his face, and there’s tears dripping down his cheeks, and there’s tears against her lips as she kisses him breathless. 

“ _Yes_ ,” she tells him and can’t stop laughing or crying. “It’s _always_ been yes.”

*

They can’t get married—both lost in time, neither sure where the other is. 

It doesn’t stop them from pretending though. Rings adjourn fingers, twenty-eight-year-old Adrien pressing kisses to twenty-eight-year-old Marinette’s lips, the “ _I do_ ” and _always_ ” somewhere in the spaces between them. 

It’s been a decade since they were the same age.

*

Marinette often wonders if there’s a limit to how much you can love someone. She wonders if there’s a limit to how _long_ you can love someone. 

At thirty, Adrien’s mother’s wedding ring burns like silver fire on her finger wherever she goes, a constant reminder of who put it there. She thinks about Adrien, tries to picture her future where _they_ don’t exist, but it’s impossible. 

Every time she thinks about the future, where she’s thirty-something and with another man, she can’t imagine what life without Adrien will be like. It’s like trying to imagine a world where the sun doesn’t shine and the sky isn’t blue, where the road to her parents’ bakery isn’t cracked with age, where the pink lilies on her porch don’t grow after the rain falls.

It’s impossible, so she tries not to think about it. 

She also tries not to think about the fact that it’s been six months since Adrien last traveled.

(She tries but fails every time.)

*

She’s thirty-one and married to a ghost. 

It’s been five months since she last traveled.

*

The last time she sees Adrien is when he’s twenty-two and in love with a girl who burst into his coffee shop one day just to tell him that she loved him. 

They go to brunch and then kiss goodbye on the sidewalk, and Adrien fingers her ring and promises to catch up. “I think this is the oldest I’ve ever seen you,” he notes, and she tries not to cry, tries to pretend that there’s so much more future between them, tries not to think about how she’s going to lose him. 

“You’ll see me older someday,” she says, and this time is a far-fetched dream because if there’s one thing she can’t promise him, it’s time. 

Adrien stares at her with those green eyes that glitter like stars. “You know,” he tells her. “I think this is the happiest I’ve ever seen you.” 

Marinette can’t even form a proper response, only huffs a soft laugh and presses her lips to her wedding ring.

*

Marinette is thirty-three and has started a new job as a fashion designer at a renowned business in Paris. Adrien’s mother’s wedding ring still sits on her finger because she made a promise when she was twenty and refuses to break it. She’s unpacking her desk supplies from a box and adjusts her new nameplate with a soft sigh, the golden metal glinting in the sunlight streaming from the window. 

There’s a knock against her door, pulling her from her morning musings. “Hey, I found this box outside your office, and I think you dropped… _Marinette_?”

The voice strikes her deep inside, bringing her heart stammering to a stop. She twists around on her heel and a bright smile overtakes her face. “Adrien!” she cries and wraps her arms around his neck, his own holding her tight against his chest. “I didn’t think I’d ever see you again!” 

“I can’t believe you’re here,” he gushes to her, eyes wide and brimming with questions. “I haven’t traveled in three years, and the last time I saw you, you were seven at that park, and… and I thought I’d _lost_ you!” 

“Wait, wait,” she says, pressing her hands to his shoulders to keep him still. “What do you mean you haven’t traveled?” 

“I don’t know,” Adrien tells her, running a hand through his hair, already messy to begin with. “It just _stopped_. Master Fu thinks it’s because the clock genes got shocked back into place or something, or maybe it just… I _don’t know_ , but I am so happy you’re here, I was worried you weren’t traveling anymore—” 

“I haven’t traveled in two years,” she says. 

Just to check, she glances around her office. It’s still her nameplate, still her box, still the picture of her parents in the corner, still the pink lilies and blue poppies on the windowsill. 

“Then how are you here?” he asks her. 

“I don’t know,” she tells him. “But this is my timeline and my reality. I woke up and came to work. I’m here because I got a new job with Gabriel Fashions, and this is where I’m supposed to be.” 

Adrien bites his bottom lip and shakes his head. “Then if you didn’t travel, and I didn’t travel…” 

Then… 

Then… 

Marinette doesn’t waste her time thinking. She grabs him by the collar and pulls him forward, kissing him and kissing him, until he’s laughing and so is she, tears streaming down both of their faces. 

“H-How are you _here_?” she asks him, flabbergasted. “I looked, but I could never find you.” 

“Gabriel’s my father. He owns this whole building, and I help with the business… But _God_ , Mari, you’re here, you’re here,” he whispers against her forehead. “You’re really _here_.” 

“I’ve always been here,” she tells him and intertwines their fingers together, the silver of their matching wedding bands glinting in the sunlight. 

_Same timeline, same universe, same Adrien_.

*

She’s thirty-five and sitting at the kitchen table of her and Adrien’s home a mile from the office. Her wedding ring sits on her finger, but soon she’ll have to switch to a necklace as her fingers swell from her pregnancy. Across from her, Nino, her husband’s best friend, smiles around the rim of his coffee mug and points to a picture in the catalog. 

“I think you should get this crib,” he tells her. “That’s what Alya and I got for the twins. It’s sturdy and does its job.” 

She pushes herself to her feet, eager for some more tea, still laughing. “It’s fire engine red, Nino.” 

“There’s nothing wrong with red,” he grumbles under his breath. 

Her giggles spill into the space between them as Adrien comments from the other side of the room, “How about blue? Or green?” 

“You already got the room painted blue,” she snipes back. “We don’t need it looking like the Cookie Monster threw up in there.” 

“Hey,” he says and peers around the cabinet, a wrench in hand. “There’s nothing wrong with blue. I— _oh_.” Adrien pauses, blue eyes softening as he stares out the window onto their balcony.

Marinette simply sighs and turns on her heel, already knowing well enough what she’ll find. Her own wet eyes stare back as the younger Marinette begins to fade away, hands clenched to her chest in despair. 

She smiles and waves goodbye, quietly telling her that it’s okay, because _it is, it does work out_. 

It’s not much, but the younger her has a lifetime to figure out what she means. 

Warm arms loop around her waist, lips pressing against the nape of her neck. “You weren’t kidding.” 

“I told you,” she says and leans back against Adrien’s shoulder. “She’s going to be very worried for a while.” 

“I’m sorry I worried you.” 

She turns around in his arms and kisses him—slow and soft. “It’s worth it,” she whispers. “You’ve always been worth it.”

And the rest, they say, is history.


End file.
